The Transformation of Experience in Narrative 5yntax 355
9 The Transformation of
Experience in
Narrative Syntax
IN the couÍ'se of our studies of vernacular language, we have
developed a ?umb~r of devices to overcome the constraints of the
face-to-face lOtervlew and obtain large bodies of tape-recorded
1
casual. speech. The most effective of these techniques produce
narratl~es of per~onal experience, in which the speaker beco mes
deep,ly lOvolved lO re~earsing or even reliving events of his past.
The Danger of Death question is the prototype and still the most
generaIly used: at a certain point in the conversation 2 the l' t . experience within the black English vernacular culture, In the earlier
k .. w ' n erVlewer
as s,. er~ you ever in a situation where you were in serious danger
of ~elOg kllle.d, where you said to yourself- 'This is it'?" In the
sectlOn of our lOterview schedule that deals with fights we k "w
. fi h ' as ere
you :,ver ,l,n a g t with a guy bigger than you?" When the subject
says Yes we pause and then ask simply, "What happened? "3 The
1...For a revie~ of these techniques and quantitative analysis of their effectiveness
se~ The l.soIatlOn of Contextual Styles" in Sociolinguistic Patterns. The resen;
dlScdusslOn IS based upon the Investigation of the structure and function of the la~gua
use In south-central Harle' l'" ge
3288. m, a pre ImInary verSlOn appears as section 4.8 in CRR
2. Our techmques do not utilize fixed questionnaires, but a schedule of topics with
sorne transltlOns and questlOns specified In exact detad. It should be noted that the
placement of the danger-of-death question IS an important poin!. Ludlcrous results
are obtaIned when students mtroduce it in a mechanieal way in the style of a
eonventlOnal Intervlew.
3. Note that the original question ca lis for only one or two words; this is a "Yes-No"
questlOn. The subjeet first beeomes eommitted to a narrative by a simple 'yes'. He
then beeomes Involved In the more detailed aceount of what happened as a necessar
J~st¡fieatlOn of the c1alm made by his first response. The initial impetus provided b~
t e Yes-No questlOn IS an Important element in this proeedure. Many formal interviews
use q~es\l)o~~ of~he form "Can you tell me something amusing (dangerous exciting
Impor an . at as happened to you?" Though such questions will prod~ee som~
res:o nse In sorne iJsteners, they are quite unsatisfaetory as a rule to both speaker
an Ilntervlewer; the reasons for their inadequaey make a niee topic for diseourse
ana ySls. .
354
narratives that we have obtained by such methods form a large body
of data on comparative verbal skills, ranging across age levels,
classes, and ethnic groups. Because they occur in response to a
specific stimulus in the interview situation, they are not free of the
interactive effect of the outside observer. The form they take 'is in
fact typical of discourse directed to someone outside of the immedi-
ate peer group of the speaker. But beca use the experience and
emotions involved here form an important part of the speakers'
biography, he seems to undergo a partial reliving of that experience,
and he is no longer free to monitor his own speech as he normaIly
does in face-to-face interviews (Sociolinguistic Patterns, chapter 3).
In a previous study we have presented a general framework for
the analysis of narrative which shows how verbal skills are used
to evaluate experience (Labov and Waletzky 1967). In this chapter
we examine the narratives we obtained in our study of south-central
Harlem from preadolescents (9 to 13 years old), adolescents (14 to
19), and adults to see what linguistic techniques are used to evaluate
analysis we concentrated upon the placement of evaluative clauses
in an "evaluation section" which suspended the action of the narra-
tive at a crucial point; this discussion considers a wider range of
evaluative elements, including the syntactic elaboration of the clause
itself. An unexpected result of the comparison across age levels is
that the use of many syntactic devices for evaluation does not de-
,;
velop until late in life, rising geometricaIly from preadolescents to
·1 adolescents to adults.
Before beginning the analysis, it wiIl be helpful for the reader to
be acquainted with the general character and impact of narratives
in black vernacular style. We will cite here in fuIl three fight narra-
tives from leaders of vernacular peer groups in south-central Harlem
who are widely recognized for their verbal skills and refer to these
throughout the discussion to illustrate the structural features of
narrative. The first is by Boot. 4
1 (Something Calvin did that was reaIly wild?)
Yeah.
a It was on a Sunday
b and we didn't have nothin' to do after I-after we
carne from church
4. Remarks in parentheses are by the intervicwer. The initial qucstions asked by
the interviewer are also given to help clarify the evaluative foeus of the narrative.
 356 THE USES OF BEV 357
The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax

c Then we ain't had nothin' lo do. d Yeah, you know, 1 was sittin' on the corner an' shit,
d So 1 say, "CaIvin,let's go get our-out our dirty clolhes smokin' my cigarette, you know
on e 1 was high, an' shit.
and play in the dirt.'· f He walked over to me,
e And so Calvin say, "Let's have a rock-a rock war." g "Can 1 have a cigarette?"
f And 1 say, "AlI right." h He was a little taller than me.
g So Calvin had a rock. bu! not thal mucho
h And we as-you know, here go a wall 1 said, "1 ain't got no more, man,"
and a far away here go a wal!. j 'cause, vou know, all 1 had was one left.
j Calvin th'ew a rock. kAn' 1 ain't gon' give up my last cigarette unless 1
k 1 was lookin' and-uh- got sorne more.
I And Calvin th'ew a rock. So 1 said, "1 don't have no more, man."
m lt oh-it almost hit me. m So he, you know. dug on the pack,
n And so 1 looked down lo another rock; 'cause the pack.was in my pocket.
o Say "Ssh!" n So he said, "Eh man, 1 can't get a cigarette, man?
pAn' it pass me. o 1 mean-I mean we supposed lo be brothers, an'
q 1 sayo "Calvin, I'm bust your head for thal!" shit."
r Calvin stuck his head out. p So 1 say, "Yeah, well, yOll know, mano all 1 got lS
s 1 th'ew the rock one, you dig il?"
tAn' the rock went up, q An' 1 won't give up my las' one to nobody.
u 1 mean-went up- r So vou know, the dude, he looks al me,
v ,carne down sAn; he-I 'on' know-
w an' say [slap!] he jus' thought he gon' rough that
x an' smacked him in the head J motherfucker up.
y an' his head busted. 1 He said, "1 can't get a cigarette."
The second narrative is by Larry H., the core member of lhe Jets u 1 said, "Tha's what 1 said, my man".
whose logic was analyzed in chapter 5. This is one of Ihree fighl v You know, so he said, "What you sllpposed to be
stories told by Larry which match in verbal skill his oulstanding bad, an' shit?
performance in argument, ritual insults, and olher speech evenls of w What, you Ihink you bad an' shit?"
Ihe black vernacular culture. 5 x So 1 said, "Look here, my man,
y I don't think I'm bad, you understand?
2 Bul I mean, you know, if 1 had it,
z
a An' Ihen, three weeks ago 1 had a fight wilh Ihis you could git it
other dude oulside. aa 1 like lo see you with it, you dig it?
b He gol mad bb But Ihe sad part about il,
'cause 1 wouldn 't give him a cigarette. cc You gol lo do without it.
c Ain '1 that a bitch? dd That's all, my man."
(Oh yeah?) ce So Ihe dude, he 'on' to pushin' me, mano
(Oh he pushed you?)
5, See chapters 5 and B for olher quotatíons fmm Larry. ff An' why he do that?
 THE USES OF BEV

gg Everytime somebody fuck with me, My ma wouldn't give me no money.

why they do it? m And 1 played hookies one day,
hh 1 put that cigarette down, n (She) put something on me. 6
ii An' boy, let me tell you, o 1 played hookies, man,
1 beat the shit out a that motherfucker. p so 1 said, you know, I'm not gonna play hookies no
jj 1 tried to kill 'im-over one cigarette! more
kk 1 tried to kilI 'im. Square business! 'cause 1 don't wanna get a whupping.
II After 1 got through stompin' him in the face man q So 1 go to school
mm You know, all of a sudden 1 went crazy! ' , r and this girl says, "Where's the candy?"
nn 1 jus' went crazy. s 1 said, "1 don't have it"
00 An' 1 jus' wouldn't stop hittin the motherfucker. She says, powww!
pp pig it, 1 couldn't stop hittin' 'im, man, u So 1 says to myself, "There's gonna be times my
till the teacher pulled me off o' him. mother won't give me money
qq An' guess what? After all that 1 gave the dude the because (we're) a poor family
cigarette, after all that. v And 1 can't take this all, you know, cvery time shc
rr Ain't that a bitch? don't give me any money."
(How come you gave 'im a cigarette?) w So 1 say, "Well, 1 just gotta fight this girl.
ss 1 'on' know. x She gonna hafta whup me.
tt 1 jus' gave it to him. y 1 hope she don't whup me."
uu An' he smoked it, too! z And 1 hit the girl: powwww!
Arr: ong the young adults we interviewed in our preliminary explo- aa and 1 put something on it.
r~tlOn of south-central Harlem, John L. struck us immediately as a bb 1 win the fight.
glfted s.tory teller; the following is one of many narratives that have cc That was one of the most important.
been hlghly regarded by many listeners. This discussion will first review briefly the general def\nition of
3
(What was the most important fight that you remember narrative (section 1), its overall structure (section 2), types of evalua-
one that sticks in your mind ... ) , tion and their embedding in narrative structure (section 3); we will
a Well, one (I think) was with a girl. then considero the basic syntax of narrative clauses and sources of
b Like 1 was a kid, you know, syntactic complexity (section 4), and finally the use of complex
c And she was the baddest girl, the baddest girl in syntactic devices in evaluation and devclopments with age (scction
the neighborhood. 5). The main body of narratives citcd will be from our work in
south-central Harlem, but frequent references will be made to mate-
d If you didn't bring her candy to school,
rials drawn from other urban and rural areas, from both white and
she would punch you in the mouth;
e And you had to kiss her black subjects.
when she'd tell you.
1. Definition of Narrative
f This girl was only about 12 years old, man,
g but she was a killer. We define narrative as one method of recapitulating past experi-
h She didn't take no junk; ence by matching a verbal sequence of clauscs to the sequence of
She whupped all her brothers.
j And 1 carne to school one day 6. To pul something on someone means lo 'hit him han)'. See also aa, 1 pul some-
k and 1 didn't have no money. thing o.n it '1 hit hard'.
 I Ht U::'t:) Ur tH:V

events which (it is inferred) actually occurred. For example a pre- a minimal narrative is defined as one containing a single temporal
adolescent narrative: ' juncture.
4 a This boy punched me The skeleton of a narrative then consists of a series of temporally
b and 1 punched him ordered clallses whieh we may call narrative clauses. A narrative
c and the teacher carne in such as 401' 5 consists entirely of narrative clauses. Here is a minimal
d and stopped the fighe narrative w hich con tains only two:
An adult narrative: 8 a 1 know a boy named Harry.
b Another boy threw a bottle at him right in the head
5 a Well this person had a httle too much to drink c and he had to get seven stitches.
b and he attacked me
c and the friend carne in This narrative contains three clauses, but only two are narrative
d ami she stopped it. clauses. The first has no temporal juncture, and might be placed after
b or after e without disturbing temporal order. It is equally true at
In each case we have four independent clauses which match the the end and at the beginning that the narrator knows a boy named
order of the inferred Slvents. It is important to note that other means Harry. Clause a may be caBed a free c1ause since it is not confineel
of recapitulating these experiences are available which do not follow by any temporal juncture.
the same sequence; syntactic embedding can be used: Sometimes a number of clauses will seem lo contain a narrative,
ti a A friend of mine carne in just but closer inspection shows that they contain no narrative juncture,
in time to stop and that they are not in faet narratives in this sense. For example,
tbis person who had a HUle too much the following material was given in answer to the Danger of Death
to drink question by a member of the Inwood group:
from attacking me. 9 (You ever been in a situation where you thought you were
Or else the past perfect can be used to reverse the order: gonna get killed?)
Oh, Yeah, 10Ua time, mano
7 a The teacher stopped the fight. (Like, what happened?)
b She had just come in. a Well, like we used to jump off the trestle
c 1 had punched this boy. b and the trestle's about six-seven stories high.
d He had punched me. c You know, we used to go swimmin' there ...
Narrative, then, is only one way of recapitulating this past experi- el We used to jump offa there, you know.
~nce: the. clauses are characteristicalIy ordered in temporal sequence; e An' uh-like, wow! Ya get up there
¡f nar~a~lve clauses are reversed, the inferred temporal sequence of
f An' ya fee} like
the ongmal semantic interpretation is altered: 1 punched this boy/ you are gonna die and shit, y'know.
a~d he punched me instead of This boy punched me/and 1 punched g Couple a times 1 almost ... 1 thOllght 1 was gonna
hlm. drown. you know.
. With this conception of narrative, we can define a minimal narra- Because aB of these clauses refer to general events which have
~lve as a sequence of two clauses which are temporally ordered: that occurred an indefinite number of times, it is not possible to falsify
1S, a change m the!r.order will :result in a change in the temporal
i the situation by reversing clauses. Clauses f and g refer to orelered
Se~llenGe of the ongmal semanhe interpretation. In alternative ter- events on any one occasion, bul since they are in the general present
mmology. there lS temporal juneture between the two clauses, and
I they refer to an indefinite number of occasions. so that it is the case

j
 The Transformation of ExperiencE' in Narrative Synlax
363
THE USES OF BEV

Ihat sorne g followed sorne f. Clauses containing usad to, would; and more fully developed types. Briefly, a fully-formed narrative may
the genew} present are not narrative clauses and cannot support a show the following:
narrative. Abstraet.
10 1.
It is also the case that subordinate clauses do not serve as narrative
2. Orientation.
clauses. Once a dause is subordinated to another, it is not possible Complieating aetion.
3.
to disturb the original semantic interpretation by reversing it. Thus Evaluation.
4.
John L.'s narratlve: Result or resolution.
5.
3 d If you didn't bring her candy to school 6. Coda.
she would punch you in the mouth. Of eourse there are complex chainings and embeddings of thes:
e And you had to kiss her elements, but here we are dealing with the simpler forms. Comph-
\~hen she'd teH you. eating action has been eharacterized in section 1, and the resul.t may
contains two sets of events, each of which is in faet temporally be regarded for the moment as the termination o~ tha~ serJes of
ordered: fin;t you didn't bring the eandy, then she would puneh you; events. We will consider briefly the nature and lunctlOn of the
first the girl told you, and then you kissed her, not the other way abstraet, orientation, coda, and evaluation.
around. But this is not signalled by the order of the clauses; a reversal
does not disturb this interpretation: 2.1 The Abstract
It is not uncommon for narrators to begin with one or two clauses
d' She would puneh you in the mouth
if you didn't bring her eandy to schooL summarizing the whole story.
e' and when she'd teH you 11 (Were you ever in a situation where you thought you were
you had to kiss her. j in serious danger of being killed?)
J I talked a man out of-Old Doe Simon 1 talked him out
It is only independent clauses which can function as narrative ¡
clauses-and as we will see below, only particular kinds of inde- 1 of pulling the trigger.
1
pendent clauses. In the representation of narratives in this section, When this story is heard. it can be seen that the abstraet does
we willlist each clause on a separate line, but lelter only the inde- eneapsulate the point of the story. In 12 there is a sequenee of two
pendent clauses. The internal syntax of the individual clauses will stIeh abstraets:
be the focus of sections 4 and 5; for the mamen! we will consider .¡
the clauses as a whole, classified as nárrative and free. 7 The relative
'1 12 (Were you ever in a situation where you were in serious
arrangement of these clauses is the aspect of narrative analysis
considered in Labov and Waletzky 1967; we will deal with this only
I danger of being killed?)
a My brother put a knife in my head.
briefly before proceeding to the internal structure. 1 (How'd that happen?)
j b Like kids, you get into a fight
c and 1 twisted his arm up behind him.
2. The OveralI Structure of Narrative
'1 d This was just a few days after my father died ...
Some narratives, like 4, contain only narrative clauses; they are
complete in the sense that they have a beginning, a middle, and an Here the speaker gives one abstract and follows it with anoth~r after
end. But there are other elements of narrative structure found in the interviewer's question. Then without further promptmg, he
begins the narrative proper. The narrative might just as well have
7. There are also restricled e/a ases. which can be displaced over a large part of
begun with the free clause d; b and e in this sense are not ab~olutely
the narratlve without altering the temporal sequence of the original semantic ínter-
pretatíon. but not over the entire narrative. requíred, since they eover the same ground as the narratIve as a
364 THE USES OF BEV
whole. Larry's narrative (2) is the third of a series of three, and there
is no qucstion just before the narrativc itself, but there is well-formed
abstract:
2 a An' then, three weeks ago 1 had a fight with this other
dude outside.
b He got mad
'cause 1 wouldn't give him a eigarette.
e Ain't that a biteh?
Larry does not give the abstraet in plaee of the story; he has no
intention of stopping there, but goes on to give the fuU account.
What then is the funetion of the abstraet? It is not an advertisement
or a warning: the narrator does not wait for the listener to say, 'Tve
heard about that," or "Don't tell me that now." lf the abstraet eovers
the same ground as the story, what does it add? We will eonsider
this problem further in discussing the evaluation section below.
2.2 Orientotion
At the outset, it is neeessary to identify in sorne way the time,
plaee, persons, and their activity or the situation. This ean be done
in the course of the first several narrative clauses, but more eom-
monly there is an orientation seetion eomposed of free clauses. In
Boot's narrative (1), clause a sets the time (Sundoy); clause b the
persons (wc), the situation (nothin' to do) and further specifieation
of the time (ofter we come fram church); the first narrative clause
follows. In Larry's narrative (2), sorne information is already avail-
able in the abstraet (the time-three wccks ogo; the plaee-outside
of school); and the persons-this other dude ond Lorry). The orien-
tation seetion then begins with a detailed pieture of the situation-
Larry sittin' on the comer, high.
Many of John L.'s narratives begin with an elaborate portrait of
the main character-in this case, clauses a-i are aU devoted to the
baddest girl in the neighborhood, and the first narrative clause brings
John L. and the girl faee to faee in the sehoolyard.
The orientation section has sorne interesting syntaetie properties;
it is quite eommon to find a great many past progressive clauses in
the orientation seetion-sketching the kind of thing that was going
on before the first event of the narrative oceurred or during the entire
episode. But the most interesting thing about orientation is its place-
ment. It is theoretieally possible for aIl free orientation clauses to
The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax .365
be plaeed at the beginning of the narrative, but in practiee, we find
much of this material is placed at strategic points later on, for rcasons
to be examined below.
2.3 The Codo
There are also free clauses to be found at the ends of narratives;
for example, John L.'s narrative ends:
ec That was one of the most important.
This clause forms the coda. It is one of the many options open to
the narrator for signalling that the narrative is finished. We find many
similar forms.
13 And that was that.
14 And that-that was it, you know.
Codas may also contain general observations or show the effeets of
the events on the narrator. At the end of one fight narrative, we have
15 I was given the rest of the day off.
And ever since then I haven't se en the guy
'cause l quit,
l quit, you know.
No more problems.
Sorne codas whieh strike us as partieularly skillful ar~ strangely
diseonnected from the main narrative. One New Jersey woman told
a story about how, as a little girl, she thought she was drowning,
until a man carne along and stood her on her feet-the water was
only four feet deep.
16 And you know that man who picked me out of the water?
He's a detective in Union City
And l see him every now and again.
These eodas (15-16) have the property of bridging the gap between
the moment of time at the end of the narrative proper and the
present. They bring the narrator and the listener back to the po.int
at which they entered the narrative. There are many ways of domg
this: in 16 the other main actor is brought up to the present: in 15,
the narrator. But there is a more general function of codas whieh
subsumes both the examples of 15-16 and the simpler forms of 13-14.
Codas close off the sequenee of complicating actions and indieate
 367
366 THE USES OF BEV The Transformation of Experience in Narratíve Syntax

The difference between evaluated and unevaluat~d n~rrative a~-

that none of the events that followed were important lo the narratIve. . 1 h n we examine narrative of Vlcanous expen-
A chain of actions may be thought of as successive answers to the
question "Then what happened?"; "And then whal happened?" After ~~~~~ ~o~~~l~;:t ~e~ie: o~ i~te::rie;~c:~~spr~;d~~~~~~t~ts t~~e~~it~~
a coda such as Tha! was that, the question "Then what happened'?" central Harlem, we as e h t' was "The Man from
is properly answered, "Nothing; 1 jusl told you what happened," It programs; the most popular at t e lIne
is even more obvious after the more complex codas of 15 and 16; U.N.e.L.E."
lhe time reference of the discourse has been reshifted to the present, a This kid-Napoleon got shot
17
so that "what happened then?" can only be interpreted as a question b and he had to go on a missíon.
about the present; the answer is "Nothing; here 1 am." Thus the c And so this kid, he went with Solo,
"disjunctive" codas of 15 and 16 forestall further questions about d So they went . .
the narrative ¡lself: the narrative events are pushed away and sealed e and this guy-they went through thls wmdow,
off.8 . and thev eaught him.
f
g And th~n he beat up them other people.
2.4 Evaluation
h And they went
Beginnings. middles, and ends of narra ti ves have been analyzed and then he said
in many accounts of folklore or narrative. But there is one important that this old lady was his mother
aspect of narrative which has not been díscussed-perhaps the most and then he-and at the end he say
important element in addition to the basic narrative clause. That is that he was the guy's friendo
what we term the evaluation of lhe narrative: the means used by
the narrator to indicale the point of the narrative, its raison d'elre: This is typical of many such narratives of vica.rious ~xperience
. 11 cted We begin in the middle of thmgs w)tho~t any
why it was told, and what the narrator is getting ato There are many th at we co e . . ay s amblOuoUS
ways lo tell the same story, to make very different points, or to make orientation section; pronominal reference IS many v:r . d b ff t
h ut But the meaningless and dlsonente e ee
no point at all. Pointless slories are met (in English) with the wither- and obscure throug o'N f the remarkable events that occur
ing rejoinder, "So what?" Every good narrator is continualIy warding 17 has deeper roots. one o f 1
of 17 with a narrative o persona
off this question; when his narrative is over, it should be unthinkable is evaluated. We may compare .
for a bystander to say, "So what?" Instead, the appropriate remark ex perience toId by Norris W., eleven years old.
would be, "He did?" or similar means of registering the reportable a When 1 was in fourth
character of the events of the narrative. 18
no, it was in third grade-
This boy he stole my glove.
8. The coda can Ihus be seen as one means of solving Ihe problem of indicaling
c He took my glove
Ihe end of a "Iurn" al speaking. As Harvey Saeks has poinled out, a sentenee is an d and said that his father found it downtown on the
oplimal uuí! for Ihe utterance. in Ihal Ihe Iislener's syulactic eompeteuce is employed
in a double sense-Io lel him know when the senlenee is complete aud also when ground.
it is his turo lo lalk. Narralives requíre olher means for Ihe narralor lo signal Ihe (And you fight him?)
faet Ihal he is beginning a long series of senlenees whíeh will form one "Iurn" and e 1 told him that it was )'mpossible for him to find
lo mark Ihe end of Ihal sequence. Many of Ihe deviees we have been discussing here
are best llnderslood in lerms of how the speaker and the lislener lel each other know
downtown .
'cause all those people were waIktng by
whose turn il is to lalk. l'raditional folk lales and fairy lales have fixed formulas
which do this al the beginning and Ihe end, but Ihese are nol available for personal and just his father was the only one
narratives. It can also be said Ihat a good coda provides more Ihan a mechanical that found it?
sollllion for Ihe sequenCÍng problem: il leaves the listener with a feeling of salisfaclion f So he got all (mad).
and completeness Ihat mallers have been rounded off and accounted foro
 lile IranslurlT1dtlOIl UI Uq.Jt:IICIICC 'JI 1~"lidl"C Ji ' "''''
Illt u::>t::> UI" l:lI:V

g Then I fought him.

:1
~t
. . h' h the aetion is suspended while elaborate
to pomt to d-e'dm,~ le d This is indced the major point of the
h 1 knoeked him al! out in the street. arguments are eve ope . d t' d m-o But it would
h again in the rama lC co a .
So he say he give. argument, as s o~n. , luation oC 18 to d-e, since evaluative
j and 1 kept on hitting him. he a mistake .to ~lmlt the eva narrative. We must thereforc
k Then he started crying devices are dlstrlbutcd throughout the 7 b . d' ating E as
odif the scheme of Labov and Waletzky 196 y ID le. ,'.
1 and ran home to his father. m y f ' 1 t' that penetrate the narratlve as ID
m And ¡he father told him the focus of waves o eva ua IOn
n that he ain't find no glovc. Fig. 9.1.
Evaluauon
This narrative is diametricalIy opposed to 17 in its degree of evalua-
tion. Every line and almost every eIement of the syntax contributes
:1
lo the point, and that point is self-aggrandizement. Eaeh element of
the narrative is de'signed to make Norris look good and "this boy"
100 k bad. Norris knew that this boy stole his glove-had the nerve
to just walk off with it and then make up a big story to claim that
it was his. Norris didn't lose his eool and start swinging; first he
destroyed this boy's fabrication by logie, so that everyone could see
how phony the kid was. Then this boy lost his head and got mad
and started fighting. Norris beat hím up, and was so outraged at the
phony way he had acted that he didn't stop when the kid sur-
rendered-he "went crazy" and kept on hitting him. Then this punk
started crying, and ran home to his father like a baby. Then his
father-his very own father told him that his story wasn't truco
Norris's story foIlows the character-istic two-part structure of fight
narra ti ves in the BE vernacular; cach part shows a different side of
his ideal character. In the account of the verbal exchangc that led
up to the fight, Norris is eool, logieal, good with his mouth, and strong
in insisting on his own right. In the second part, dealing with the
action, he appears as the most dangerous kind of fighter, who "just
goes crazy" and "doesn't know what he did." On the other hand,
his opponent is shown as dishonest, clumsy in argument, unable to 1
Fig. 9.1.
control his temper, a punk, a lame, and a coward. Though Norris
does not display the same degree óf verbal skilI that Larry shows
in 2, there is an exact point-hy-point match in the structure and 'th . orientation proceeds to the
evaluative features of the two narratives. No one listening to Norris's A complete narrati~e begms w~
at ~~e focus of e'valuation before
story within the framework of the vernacular value system will say complicati~g aehon l~ sU~~:~e resolution, and rcturns the listener
i
"So what?" The narratíve makes Hs point and effectively bars this the resolutlOn, c?nc u .ehs h' d The evaluation of the narrative
th esent time Wlt t e co a. 1 .
question. to e pr h' h's concentrated in the eva uatlOn
e
forms a secondary struetu: w l.e 1 forms throughout the narrative.
If we were to look for an evaluation section in 18, concentrating
upon c1ause ordering as in Labov and Waletzky 1967, we would have seetion but may be found m vaflOUS
 37\
· n of Experience in Narrative Syntax
JIU THE USES OF BEV The Trans f arma t 10

. . . ortable. The narrators of most of these

In the following sections we wiU see how that penetration is accom- behavlOr, and It lS not rep t how th"t the events involved
. d social pressure o s u
plished through the internal structure of narrative clauses as well stones were un er d 1 or that someone else rea11y broke
as the ordering of those clauses. were truly danger~us an unusua ~ and reportable way. Evaluative
Wc can al so look al narralive as a series of answers lo underlying the normal rules m .~n ~utr~g~ouin dan erous, weird, wild, erazy;
questions: dcvices say lo us: thlS was tcrnfy g, g 11 that it was
. hilarious, wonderful; more genera Y,.
or amusmg, ual-that is, worth reportmg. It was not
a. Abstract: what was this about? strange, uncom mon , or unus f h '11
b. Orientation: who, when, what, where? . d ryday or run-o -t e mI .
ordinary, plal~, hum r~;, eve. d r briefly sorne of the large-seale,
c. Complicating action: then what happened?
In this sectlOn. we Wl eOl:s~ti~n and then turn in section 4 to a
:~~:nda~t:lee~h:~~:~~:oe:~f the syntactie devices within the clause
d. Evaluation: so what?
e. Result: what finally happened?
Onlye, the complicating action, is essential if we are to recognize which carry out this function.
a narrative, as pointed out in section 1. The abstract, the orientation, '.1
the resolution, and the evaluation answer questions which relate to 3.1 External Evaluation
t the narrative turn to the listener, and tell
the funetion of effective narrative: the first three to clarify referential The narrator can s op . . ' t 't f middle-class narra-
functions, the last to answer the functional question d-why the story him what the point is. ThlS lS a common r a l a . .
was told in the first place. But the referenee of the abstraet is broader tors who frequently interrupt the course of thCl~ n;rrah~. ~or
, 1 stor told by seeretary about a tnp rom eXleo
lhan lhe orientation and eomplieating action: it includes these and
the evaluation so that the abstract not only states what the narrative ~~;m.pl~~ie~nt1e pl~ne almost didn't get over the mountains. She
is about, but why it was toldo The coda is not given in answer to f/e~~~ntly interrupted the narrative with such eomments as
any of these fi ve questions, and it is aceordingly found less freq uently gg and it was the strangest feeling
than any other element of the narrative. The coda puts off a ques- 19
because you couldn't tell
tion-it signals that questions e and d are no longer relevant. if they were rea11y gonna make it
hh if they didn't make it,
3. Types of Evaluation it was such a sma11 little plane,
there was no ehance for anybody.
There are a great many ways in which the point of a narrative
can be conveyed-in which the speaker signals to the listener why
he is telling it. To identify the evaluative portian of a narrative, it But it was really quite terrifie ..
xxx
is neeessary to know why this narrative-or any narrative-is felt .lt was on 1Y a half-hour's ride to Mexleo CIty
yyy
to be tellable; in other words, why the events of the narrative are
reportable.
Most of the narratives eited here concern matters that are always aaaa But it was quite an experienee.
reportable: the danger of death or of physieal injury. These matters Id b ontent to let the narrative itself eonvey
oecupy a high place on an unspoken permanent agenda. Whenever Other narrators wou ~ e . them the experienee. But
people are speaking, it is relevant to say "1 just saw aman killed this informat~on t~ t.he hst~~~: tot~e~~~n within the bounds of the
on the street." No one will answer sueh a remark with "So what?" this speaker finds lt lmPloss 1 t' n l'S common in therapeutie in-
. S h xterna eva ua 10 .
If on the other hand someone says, "1 skidded on the bridge and narratIve. uc e h ' bstanee of an hour's dlseus-
. h't form t e mam su
nearly went off," someone else can say, "So what? That happens to tervlews, w ere 1 may 1 erve only as a framework for
sion. The narratives thems e ves may s
me every time 1 eross it." In other words, if the event beeomes
eommon enough, it is no longer a violation of an expected rule of the evaluation.
 I Hl: U~b Uf BEY
There are a number of intermediate steps in providing external
evaluation for a narrative which do not overtly hreak the flow of
narrative clauses. The simplest is for the narrator to attribute an
evaluative remark to himself at that moment. A black woman raised
in North Carolina was telling about a near-accident on the roads on
her way to a funeral:
20 j 1 just c!osed my eyes
k l said, "O my God, here it ¡s1"
~ut feeling that the fuI! reason for her fright would escape the
hstener, she steps out of the narrative to explain what Was in her
mind with this ~xternal evaluation:
Well, 'cause you have heard of people
going to a funeral
and getting killed themselves
before they got there
m and that is the first thing
that carne to my mind.
3.2 Embedding ot Evaluation
The first step in embedding the evaluation into the narrative and
preserving dramatic continuity, is for the narrator to quot~ the
sentiment as something occurring to him at the moment rather than
addressing it to the listener outside of the narrative. The paradig-
matlc form "This is it!" appears in 20 and in our original danger-of-
death question. In John L.'s narrative (3), the action is suspended by
the evaluation of the reasons he has to fight the baddest girl in the
neighborhood, expresscd as what he said to himself at the time, in
u-y. Of course it is unlikely that all of this internal dialogue took
place bctween the time the girl said pOWWW!9 and the time that he
hit her back, but listeners are willing to accept this dramatic fiction.
A second step towards embedding evaluation is for the narrator
to quote hímself as addressing someone else. Boot expresses his
moral indignation at Calvin's wild behavior in 1 as
q 1 say, "Calvin, I'm bust your head for thall"
9. In BEV, objecls Iba! do no! speak huI Ihat makc noises are no! said fo go X
bul lo soy X. In Boot's narralive 1, Ihe rock soy shhh! and in 3 the girl says powww!
wbcreas in while vernacular, people go powww! with their fis!s.
And Larry's most elaborate evaluation of the problem with the last
cigareUe is expressed as three rhymed couplets, suppose,dl~ ad-
dressed to the dude in x-dd. Larry's role of provocateur IS bfllha~tly
maintained by the use of an apology in the form of rhyme: smce
sincere apology is supposedly spontaneous, nothing could be less
sincere than this elahorate ritual. .
1'he next step inward is to introduce a third person who evaluates
the antagonist's actions for the narrator. A 74-year-old man who had
worked in carnivals a11 his life told a story about a man.who th~e.at­
ened to kill him because he thought his wife had commltted SUICide
on the narrator's account. He concludes:
21 z But however-that settled it for the day.
aa But'that night the manager, Lloyd Burrows, said, "You
better pack up and get out . ,
because that son of a bitch never forglves anythmg
once he gets it in his head."
hb And I did.
cc 1 packed up and got out.
dd That was two.
1'he narrator might just as well have attributed this ev~luative
eomment to himself, but it earries more drama tic force w~en It c~mes
from a neutral observer. It should be emphasized that thls tec~~lque
is used only by older, highly skilled narrators fram tra~ItlOnal
working-c!ass backgrounds. Middle-class sp~akers are les~ hkely. to
embed their evaluative comments so deepl~ m the narratne and are
in faet most likely to use external evaluatlOn.
3.3 Evaluative AcUon
A further step in dramatizing thc evaluation of a narrative is to
te11 what people did rather than what they said. A low~r.-class ~o~th
from the Lower East Side told what happened at mafltIme trammg
school when a rope broke and Idt him hanging on the masthead:
22 I never prayed to Cod so fast and so hard in my life!
(What happened?)
We11, the boys carne up
and they got me.
1 couldn't touch nuttin'.
I was shakin' like a leaL
 THE USES OF BEV

TABlE 9.1.
In the story about the airplane flight from Mexico City (19), there DISPlACEMENT SETS FOR IOHN l.'s NARRATIVE
are many striking examples of actions that reveal the tension of the ABOUT THE BADDEST GIRL IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
actors. Though this speaker uses a great de al of external evaluation. u v w x y Z aa bb ce
q s
she is also capable of maximal embedding of the evaluation:
z and we were sitting with our feet- q x
just silting there x
x
waiting for this thing to start. x
people in the back saying prayers, 'n u
x I
everything ... v Ix
w
nnn and when we saw that he was really over x l.
000 and then everybody heaved a sigh of reHef y x
I
ppp and everybody carne to z i x
qqq and put away thejr prayer beads aa x
bb
ce

sss and when we realized

that we were really out of danger b laced before or after any given clause without ~hanging
then we found out have een P I e of the original semantic interpretabon. The
that we had been so tense the tempora sequenc. nt sets for each clause. This
that our feet were IIp against the panel, yOll vertical Hnes sh~w suc~ dls~laceme haracter sketch of the an-
particular narrahve begms wlth a ~ongd c l and then after the
know , 'r of free or restncte causes,
and we were holding on to everything. tagomst. conS1S mg . fl hb k We then return to the
~rst n~rra!~ve e~e~! ~:;~~~?;:b~e :~ s:~w's the m~in ·sequence, of
3.4 Evaluation by Suspension of the Action first narra ,lve e\ e There are four narratíve events in narratIve
Most of the evaluative de vices mentioned so far will have the effect the narratIve q-cc. . t We
. h f Whl'ch forms íts own displacement set-q, r, s, .
of suspending the action of the narralive. The emotions that are causes,
l eac o . 1 11 one
d' l· ment set of five evaluatlve causes, u-y, a
expressed may have been instantaneous or simultaneous with the then have a lSp ace h ss to the resolution in z-bb and
action at the time, but when they are expressed in separate sentences, nharratidve pseuJ::~v{.~\~::ti~~ fhaerefore fils the paradig~ of Fig.
the actton stops. Stopping the acUon calls attention to that part of t e co a cc. , . . m licating actlOn q-u,
9,1, with a long onentatlOn sectlOn a-p, co p
the narrative and indicates to the listener that this has sorne connec- evaluation v-y, resolutíon z-bb, and coda cc.
tion with the evaluatíve point. When this is done artfully, the listen-
er's attention is also suspended, and the resolutlon comes with much
4. Departures from Basic Narrative Syntax
greater force, Thus as we have noted in John L.'s narrative (3), there
ls a major suspension of the narrative in between lhe time the girl narrahve c1ause itself is one of the simplest grammatical
hit him and the time he decided to hit back. This suspension can The . d eech The surface structures are for the most
be diagrammed as in Labov and Waletzky 1967 by indicating the patlern~ m ~on~:c:~d ~~lated' in a straightforward way to an equally
displacement sets of all narrative clauses as in Table 9.1. The hori- parl qUIte Slmp lt'11 be useful to describe this structure as
zontal axis represents the occurrence of the narrative clauses in simp:e deep. shtruclture. t W~ithout hierarchical phrase structure; the
a senes of eIg t e emen s,
narrative sequence; the vertical axis the range of clauses which could
 377
. f Experíence in Narratlve Syntax
The Transformatlo n o
376 THE USES OF BEV
· d Imost entirely
fi ht narratives are con fme a
Many long preadoleseent g nees of narrative clauses
first of these eight is lhe sentence adverbial, the seeond the su bjeet- to this basie syntaetie pattern. We gel seque
noun phrase, the third through eighth the verb phrase. The linear SUGh as 23:
display to be used hel'e is not a stalemcnt of grammatical relations
but only a devíee for eallíngattcntion to the appearance of more í 2:, 7
eomplex elements when they do oecur. ¡ 1 2 3 4 5 6
in the jaw.
¡ hit him
1. Conjunetions, íncludíng tcmporals: so, Clnd, bUf, then. ,',j m 1
we
went
up on the
sidewalk
2. Simple subjects: pronouns, proper names, this girl, my father. n So
3. The underIyíng auxiliary is a simple pas! tense marker whiGh is we 5taft fightin' ,
clown
o and knocked him
incorporated in the verb; no member of lhe auxiliary appears in in the
p roUed
the surfaee strueture except some past progressive was ... ing we was gutter.
q and over
in the orientation sectíon, and oeeasional q uasimodals start, begin, some
took
keep, used to, want. lO r And he doodoo
4. Preterít verbs, with adverbial particles up, over, down. (These in my face
rubbed it
particles will oGeasionalIy be plaeed under 6 or 7 by trans- s took sorne
formations no! shown.) t and it all in his
rubbed moulh.
5. CompIements of varyíng GompIexity: direet and indirecl objects. u and
6. Manner or instrumental adverbíals. was fightin'
v We
7. LOGatíve adverbíals. Narrative syntax ís partiGularly ríeh in this carne by my shirt
w Then aman
area. grabbed me
x and me off
8. Temporal adverbials and eomítative c:lauses,11 pulled
y and gel up
he hadda
The first preadoleseent narrative (4) eited as a paradigm of sim- z and thought •
aa 1 in my' baek
plieity may also be seen as an example of this basie syntax: had kicked me
• he
turned
around
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 bb So J in lhe knee
kicked him
a This boy punehed me ce and
b and 1 punehed him
e Then the carne in f . pIe and regular slructures
teacher Eaeh of the Golumns is filled~~í~~~~ ~o~l~~presenled in Ihis extraet).
ti and slopped the figh t
(exeept the temporal ,
slot 8
l ' ht hand cm e m
b dd' g with that Gomplements
We have oeeaSlO na ng - .. , 1 ments after verbs SUGh as
. r infimtlve eomp e l'
after verbs o f saymg o . k . no rearrangement of the mear
' . 'ndI'
try. Th IS IS 1 eated here by astens s, .
10. The quasimodals produce many problems which are not fully resolved. There
are sorne very clase lo Ihe "true" moda[s in meaning. like needs lo. oughl lo; though order is required. . .. of narrative syntax is not eonfined lo
they do not flip-flop, they are basically sentenee modifiers of the It ought lo be Ihal The fundamental snuplielty t' ns oí narrativesl o1d by
... Iype. and they are plainly evaluative. The situation is less clear with 5!Oft and the Slories of preadoleseents: ~arge ~:~r~~ive as a whole eonlrasts
keep (on). The inehoative 510rl does nol seem to funelion as an cvalualivc element. adults will show the same pal er~. híeh shows a much more
but kccp is almosl always so; "1 kept un hitling him." Bul in this sense, kcep is suroly .h d' ry eonversatlOn, w . .
¡j n inlensifier. not a cumparator.
sharply ..nI or ma 'j' y strllcture of narratIves IS
Th' 'mpIe aUXI l a r ' . h
11. It seems clcar that Ihere is a temporal slot before the subjee!. filled by then Gomplex slrueture. . e SI d' r eonversatio n , we hear a nc
or wllCI1 clauses. But when a temporal phrase such as ever since Ihen is introduced the most striking pomt. In or ma Y
at this poínt, it seerns hcavily marked.
 JI -'

The Transformation oí Experlence in Narratlve ':lyntax

378 THE USES OF BEV

Sometimes the gesture is used instead of a sound, as in Boo1's narra-

a great many transformatio~s and ~ s before the verb, and
variety of modals, negatives hove's and b ' tive (1): ond the rock soy (slop!)
narralÍves. Given the existence f th~m~eddmgs not found in these
Expressive phonology is superimposed upon other words of the
. o IS simple org . t' elause. Qne of the most common modes is to lengthen vowels. In
tlVC c1auses. we CiH1 ask h ' h amza IOn of narra-
narratives depart from I't; w ' ele, w en,. and with what effect do another of Larry's narratives he emphasizes:
. S mee syntactlc co 1 . .
rare in narrative , it must h ave a mar k ed eff mp 25 And we were fightin' for a lo-o-ong ti-i-me, buddy.
t hexIty. IS relatively
And in fact ' we find that de par t ures f rom theecbaw. en It does. occur . Most punches are described with powww!! lt is long and usua11y
ave a marked evaluative f Th SIC narratIve syntax mon
h orce. e perspective f th devoiced throughout. Such verbal devices are much more com
f requently expressed by re 1a t'Ive l '
y mmor synta f o 1 e narrator is than simple manual gestures and are usua11y conventional; but see
narrative elause . lnvestl'g a t'IOns a1ong the r c IC eh ements in the Boo1's way of describing the rock's passage: it soy shhhh!
elassify
. . the evaluative ele t ' se
men S m narrative und mes f ave led . us to Quontifiers are the most common means of intensifying a elause,
mgs: mtensifiers comparot . , . er our maJor head- used by narrators of aIl age levels. The intensifier 011 is often inserted
four headings e~ch inel ud or.,>: cotrrelotlVes, and explicotions. These
. e SIX o ten subtypes d d' at a critical point in preadolescent narratives; fro~ a fight narrative
syntactIc devices used to c arry out t h e functions ' involved.
epen mg on the
of one of the Aces:
26 g and then, when the man ran in the barber shop
4.1 Intensifiers
he was a11 wounded
The major modifications of narrative cla h he had cuts a11 over
stood in relation to the f 11 . b' uses can best be under-
------. ------,
o owmg aSlc scheme-

This indicates a linear series of eve

,
'. '
. In Norris's fight narrative (18) we have a similar use of 011:
h I knocked him a11 out in the street.
narrative in the same order th nts whlch are organized in the
one oí these events and st as th
ey
occ~rred. An intensifier selects Sorne operations with quantifiers are fairly mechanical. lf two guys
reng ens or mtensifies it:
jump someone, that is bad; but if six guys jump him, that is an event
intensifiers: ---) )
of another degree of magnitude and calls for a different kind of
There are many ways in which th" ... adion.
out. most of the . 1 .. IS mtenslficatlOn can be carried The de vice of repetition is relatively simple from the syntactic
, m mvo ve mmlmal d t f
syntax. We will proceed from th . eiar ures rom basic narrative point of view but is effective in narrative in two senses: it intensifies
the syntactic point of view. e slmp est to the most complex from a particular action, and it suspends the action. We have seen aboye
Gestures usually accompan a d" . many examples of such repetition. In Boo1's story about the rock,
recorded narrative. From a fi ht st elcÍlfc thls or thot in the tape- he says "The rock went up-l mean went up." In the extract from
Cobras: g ory o Speedy, the leader of the Speedy's narrative given aboye, we have an exceptiona11y effective
use of repetitio n : "You bleedin', you bleedin', Speedy, you bleedin'!"
24 g He swung A narrative by a we11-known story teller on Martha's Vineyard
h and 1 backed up involves a bird dog who was sent over to bring back a duck that
and 1 do like thot had been shot down. He carne back twice without it, and he was
sent again with strict instructions to "go over there and git that duck;"
q T~en all the guys start ho11erin', the narrator reports
You bleedin' 27 We11 sir, he went over there a third time.
you bleedin' And he didn't come back.
Speedy, you bleedin!" And he didn't come back.
r 1 say (sound) like that.
 3üU
THE USES OF BEV
The Transformation of ín Narrdtlve ::'ynldx
In fight narratives there are man . 1
contain any overl markers of Yh n~ua u~terances which do not
of an expectation that something would happen. Negative sentences
quantl'fi ers, nor expressive ho emp 1 aSls-nelther tab 00 wor d s, nor
tells us that these apparentf no ogy. ~et a knowledge of the culture draw upon a cognitíve background considerably richer than the set
y of events which were observed. They provide a way of evaluating
ative role: they are conventio~~l~x~;ses~l:e utteran~e,s play an evalu-
events by placing them against the background of other events whicb
evaluate the situation In an . :1 jYt e I~ that posltlOn to mark and
. d( U narrahve fr th míght have happened, but which did not. Comparators, including
a ,black man raised in New York Cit toId b om . e Ha~le~ series, negatíves, compare the events whieh did oceur to those which did
blg guy in the back alley." y a out a fight wlth a great
not oceur. In terms of the narrative scheme:
28 f
And I wen t to pie ces inside, you know? comparators:
---~
Befare 1 know it
g 1 picked me up a little rock As we look down the auxiliary eolumn al tbe various instan ces of
h háuled off, ' negatives, futures, and modals, it can be seen that they typieally
and landed me a David and G l' th occur at the point of evaluation, either in co-occurrenee with other
. Ih'th' Ola . evaluative elements or earrying out this funetion alone.
J 1 1m up with that rock
k An' he grabbed his head . Instead of eonsidering eaeh of these possibilities separately, let
1 An' 1 grabbed him us examine the auxiliaries of sorne of the narratives already studied
m told him "Co ' 'h b in the light of this proposed fundion of modals, fu tures. and nega-
n And th ' me on ng t ack up the baek stairs " tives.
ere lt was. '
Boot's narrative about the rack war has a few negatives in the
Clause n is a ritual utterance' it can be ' orientation, which plainly have a referential functíon-we oin't had
action started' or 'and lh h't' read as and then the real
e s 1 was on ' nothin' to do, aIong with the planning imperatives of Let's go. Then
Intensifiers as a whole do not e . , . there is a past progressive 1 was lookin' in the first evaluation section
syntax. But the other three t ,ompheate the baslc narrative
of syntactic complexily.· ypes of mternal evaluation are sources where Boot suspends the narrative for a moment to emphasize whal
a close call it was. AH the rest of the verbs are preterits 12 exeept one
4.2 Comparators future I'm bust. In speaking of an event which has not yet oecurred,
Bo'ot explicitly marks it as an evaluation of Calvin's wUd act: it is
The simplicity of narrative syntax should " . for that that the head busting will (and eventually did) take place.
take the opposite point of view' wh not be sur~nsmg ¡f we
syntactic complexity'~ Wh h l'd y should narratJves require The adolescent fight narrative of Larry is much rieher in auxilíary
b .' . y s ou the auxiliary eo t . h' structure. The abstraet contains a negative question at the outset that
ut simple preterits and quasimodals? If th t k f nham anyt mg is clearly evaluative and is repeated in the coda: Ain't that o bitGh?
to teIl whal happened these '11 . e as o t e narrator is
, WI serve very w II Wh lt 1S in faet an abstract of the evaIuative component of the narrative.
for questions, or whal reason cloes h h e . at use has he The orientation seetion eontains d-e which are progressives and
since he is dealing wilh past events? ~ ;ve to speak of the future, copulas, as we would expect. We then have a series of modals and
contain negatives? What re .. Id n why should the auxiliary
. ason wou the narrat h f negatives, whieh are best shown by isolating the auxiliary column
us t h at something did not ha e ' . .. or ave or telling 2 fOf the narrative clauses alone and neglecting verbs of saying and
us whal did happen? pp n, smce he IS In the business of telling
lhe tense marker:
We can approach this problem by re-exam' . .'
use of negatives in accounts o f ' . mmg the negatlVe. The
negation is not something thal tast ev~nts IS n~t at all obvious, since 12, Soy cannot be considered an historical present formo since it is regularly used
appens. rather It expresses the defeat for the pas! in tbe black English vernacular when na other present tense
forms occur.
 382
THE USES OF BEV
The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax JBJ

Aux Aux
f He d If you didn't bring her candy to
walkcd Over to me.
g "1 can school *
have a cigarette?"
h He she would puneh you in the mouth
"1 was a littIe taller than me ...
ain't e And you had to kiss her*
got no more, man ...
j ain't gon' *when she tell yOU.
give up my last cigarette ... would
k "1 don't f This girl was only 12 years old
have no more." -
l He g but she didn't take no junk.
dug on the pack.
m "1 can 't get a cigarette? In rapid suecession we have three modals and two negatives in the
We supposed to be brothers ... " auxiliary column. The flashbaek which follows explains the reason
This series contains a question with why John L. carne to school with no money: it is also stated in terms
negative future, a negative with a mo~ ~odal, several .negatives, a of what was not the case and what he did not want to happen. We
posed too We can tum from this hi hl a , and the quaslm.odal sup- then have the narrative proper whieh was examined in Table 9.1:
narrativc of . . . . g y evaluated narratlve to the
Vlcanous expenence that we cited as 17.
Aux
Aux q go to sehool
a Napoleon r This girl says*
got shot
b he had to * "Where 's the eandy?"
go on a mission
c this kid s I said *
d
went with Solo.
they went * "1 don't have any."
e they She says: powww!
wen t through
f they
caught him. There are no comparators in the main verbs of the four narrative
g he
h they beat up them other people clauses, but the quotation in s has a negative. How sQould such
went embedded eomparators be analyzed? In the light of our general
he
said diseussion of the embedding of evaluation, we must aeeept it as
j this old lady
was his mother evaluative in the same sense as those in a-i. The speakers are in
k he
say
l he faet evaluating the situation:the girl who does not see the eandy
was the guy's friendo makes a demand in the form of a request for information about sorne
The auxiliary column is blank except for a sin g l . unseen state of affairs, presupposing the existence of the candy; the
m~ght pass for the'orientation of this narrative Ag a~nh~~ to In what boy denies her expeetation. They are dealing with a level of expeeted
thIS absence of Com arat . . . , e us contrast and unrealized events whieh go beyond basic narrative sequenee.
John L The' T 1 ~ ors. wlt.h the hlghly evaluated narrative of

~~;~'~~hda~pgj;~~~n ~e;:asc~~r;~;~~~~::t t~~~~d~:;~~~r~;:t~:: ~~ii~:~

For this sequenee of four narrative clauses we have one negative
and one intensifier. Let us now examine the evaluation section that
follows:
Aux Aux
aWell one u So says to
was with a girl.
b Like myself,*
was a kid ...
c And she * "There 's gonna be times*
was the baddest girl in
* my mother won't give me
the neighborhood ...
money*
 384 THE USES OF BEV i4
,1
AllX
, ~i1
"

possibility of negative consequenees if Ihey are not answered. In

* because we re a poor i¡ Larry's narrative there are many examples of such implied threats.
famíly Most of these are embedded in the speech of Ihe actors. Questions
v and can't take this all, that are more openly evaluative are posed direetly lo the listener.
every lime* These bríef eonsideralions show us that the evaluative force of
she don't give me any questions cannot be assigned on the basis of their superfieia~ inter-
money." rogative formo A deeper study wouId require the analysis of each
w So say,* quoted speech aet in terms of the hierarchieal series of actions being
* Well, just golta fight this girl. performed: e.g. request for informalion --)o reqllest for action--)o
x She gonna hafta whup me. chaIlenge --)o display. Overt questions that are not embedded in the
y I hope* dramatic action, but asked directly of the listener, have a direct
*she don't whup me." evaluative funetion. Thus Larry, assuming a false innocenee in his
role of provocateur, addresses the lis tener:
T~is sel of si~ da.uses are bound together as the remem bered evalu-
ahon ?f the sltuallOn by the narrator. Thev conlain four fuiur f ff An' why he do that?
negatlves, and three modals-a toial of el~ven co es, our gg Everytime somebody fllck with me,
as the intensifier tlüs all. J:l Clcarly Ihe evaluat¡'omnparatt,ors-as w.ell Why they do it?
a 'h h' h sec IOn contams
1 mt' uc Ig er eonce.nlration of these evaIuative devices. The reso-
These questions ask for un evaluabon of the dude's actions. He in
u IOn returns lo basle syntax.
tum asks foe an evaluation of Larry's action when he says, "\lVhat
z hit the girl: powww! you supposed to be, bad an' shit?" And Larry in tum asks foe an
aa I pul something on il. evaluation from the listener at the end:
bb 1 win the fight.
qq An' guess what?
n R~~iewing these three narratives, we have seen sorne evidence that After aU that, 1 gave the dude the cigarette,
eg~tlves, futures, and modals are concentrated in the evaluative after aH tha!.
sectlOnsh of the narralive. It also ,
seems n that w'he suc h e 1ements Ain't that a bitch?
occur,
.1I ey have
Ih an evaIuative funetion as comparators ' \Ne can now
conSH er o er Iypes of comparalors of h' h 'd . The imperative is also a eomparalor, sinee the force of the eom-
complexity. ' , a Ig el egree of syntaellc mand in nalTative is frequently: 'you do this or eIse . , .' A Lower
. The quoled question in r of John L.'s narrative suggests that lles- East Side taxi driver told a long narrative about a passenger that
¡lOns. are al.so eomparalors. When lhe girl asks "Where's the can~ ?" he was sure wanted to hold up the eau and kept givíng him direetions
sh~ IS askmg about an unseen state of affairs, presupposing ~he to out-of-Ihe-way plaees. Luck was wilh him, Ihough, and he man-
eXlstence of' the. candv; aged lo get out of it. At the end:
f . f . ~ but on .a hinher
b
level , she I'S mak'mg a req uest
Iord a,c'Ion, and m hght of prevlOus" , I't I'S 11 ear d as a Ih reato
PXIJerience
29 mm and said,*
lWl, .Jt over, nI' .... If v:e consider the compelling character of aIi * "1 can't run around wilh you all nighl.
questlOns (mancls m Skmner's terminology), ii is dear Ihat all r _ let's put an end to this.
nn Now
quests. even Ihe mos! mitígaled, are lo be heard against an unrealizeed is the fare,
00 This
go your way
pp
qq anc!
You
1 '11 go mine.
..
rr so 1 got out of it that way.
 3H6
THE USES OF BEV
!he close connection between the imperative and the future appears
m nn, pp, and rr; both of them lnvolve unrealized events that are
weighed in the balance.
Tl~e suggo~tion so far ls thut nogativos, futures, modals, questions,
and ll~pera~lves are a11 comparutors und a11 involve comparison. The
parachgmatlc compurison ls of course the comparotive itself in its
various forms: as the grammatical comparative and superlative in
c!a~ses with as, in propositional phrases with like, in metaphots and
slmlles. Among the various syntactic forms that give youngor
speakers trouble, the comparative is foremost, and in our "strange
syntax" file we have collected a great many odd pro blems with
~omplex comparátive constructions. 01' the various comparators, it
lS the comparative itself which reaches the highest level of syntactic
compIexity.
There are no comparatives in Boot's rock war narrative. In 2, Larrv
t~se~ a fairly com?lex comparative which has great weight in estab-
hshmg the meanmg 01' everything thai follows:
h He was a little taller than me, bu! not thal mucho
The comp.arative is used by John L. at the same point in 3 to evaluale
the m~amn~ of th~ fo11owing events by characterizing the oppo-
nent-m thls case m the superlative form:
c And she was the baddest girl, the baddest girl in Ihe
neighborhood.
John L. also uses the superlative in his final evaluation:
ee That was one 01' the most important.
As we examine the narratives 01' older, highly ski11ed narrators,
we find a proliferation 01' comparisons which are quite beyond the
normal capacity of an adolescent. In the dog story cited aboye (27),
the fo11owmg evaluation is made when the dog returned without the
duck:
27 And that was unusual.
He'd track a duck same as a hound wouId take a rabbit
track.
To show how exasperated he was with the dog;
1 never come nearer bootin' a dog in my life.
The Transformation of Experipnce in Narr¡¡tivp Synt,lx 387
And al lhe end, he finds that Ihe dnck in quostion wasn't a wild duck
al aH-it was a tame decoy that had broken 100se and the dog was
holding hím down wíth his paw.
By gorry sir, that lhat dog knew more than 1 did.
lf 1 had booled Ihal dog, I'd a felt sorne bad.
One of the most dramatic danger-of-death stories was lold by a
retired postman on the Lower East Side: his brother had slabbod
him in the head with a knife. He concludes:
30 And the doctor just says. "Jusi about this much more."
he says, "and you'd a been dead."
Comparators then inc1ude negalives, futuros, modals, quasimodals,
questions, imperatives, ar-c1auses, superlatives. and comparatives.
more or less in increasing order of syntactic complexity.
4.3 Correiatives
A comparator moves away fram the line of narrative events lo
consider unrealized possibilities and compare them with Ihe ovenls
that did occur; correlatives bring together two events that actually
occurred so that they are conjoined in a single independent clause.
Correlatives:
This operation requires compIex synlax; it quickly goes boyond the
syntactic range 01' the younger narralors. In order of theír increasing
syntactíc compIexity. we can lisl:
1, Progressives in be ... ing which are usually used in narratives
to indicate tha! one event is occurring simultaneously with anolher,
but also may indicate extended or continued aclion. Mosl of these
occur in orienlation sections; sorne can actually form narrative
clauses. 14 But was ... ing c1auses also are found suspending the
action in an evaIuative section, as we have seen in Boot's narrative.
2. Appended participies: One or more verhs in -ing are alígned,
with tense marker and be deleled; the action described is heard as
occurring simultaneously with the action 01' the main verb of the
1
14. Thc pas! progressive wos ... ing cannol he takcn as ¡¡n addition to hasic
1 narralive svntax in many Gases. sinGe il seems 10 serve as a narrative dallse. Whilc
wos.. ¡ng
is uSllally simllltaneolls with other evenls, it is occasionally only extended,
¡¡nd can ae! as ¡he head of a narrative clause. For cxample: 'Ami [we] gol back-Il
1 was a lent show-shc was laying on a Gol wilh an iGe bag on her bead."
j
¡
 388
THE USES OE BEV
The Transforrnation of Expenence in Narrative Syntax 389
sentenee,
.. f
whieh itself may be a progressive . Such d ou bl e d progres-
sl\ie~ are requently used in orientation seetions' in Larry's narr t' , 32 f and 1 knoeked 'im down
we find: ' a l\le
g and one of them fought for lhe Boys' Club
d 1 was sittín' on the comer an'shit, h I beat him.
smokin' my cigarette, you know. and then, they gave hirn a k.nife, a long one, (l elagger,
j and 1 fought,
Here the progressivCs eharacterize the se'tting for the t', k 1 fought him with tha! ...
a whole B t f . narra lve as
. u more o len such devlees are used to highlight d
evaluate . 1 We find that elouble attributives are as rare as double appositives.
. the
' event o f a partJeu ar narrative clause. From an
th
narratlVe of Larry: ano er One would think that sueh noun phrases as big red house aneI colel
wet doy would oeeur often enough but the faet of the matter is that
they are uneornmon in colloquial style. In subjeet posi!ion, even a
31 e So the dude got smart. single attributive is uneommon (other than demonstratíves, artides,
1 know* and possessives), as inspeetion of the narratives quoted here will
,
he got smart show. Sorne adults use such eomplex noun phrases more than others;
cause 1 was dancin' one working-class man from the Harlem adult sample introduced
with her,
you know. his narrative with this clause:
'cause was danein' with her. 33 a You see, a great big guy in the baek alley,
talkin' to her, an' He tried to rnake them push him on the swing
shit. by him pestering thern
whisperin' in her ear, or trying to take advantage of them.
an' shit,
tongue kissin' with her, This double attributive is associated with the very eomplex syntax
an' shit. that follows. Sorne practised, adult narrators naturally run to such
Suc~ m.ultiple p~i'tie.iples serve to suspend the action in an evaluative combinations and use other eorrelatives su eh as 1eft-hand partici-
sech~n, they b~mg m a wider range of simultaneous events while pIes. For example, we find the following eomplex structure in narra-
the hstener walts for the other shoe to fal! as l'n th' . 1 f tive 29 eited aboye:
th l" • IS examp e rom
e eva uahon sectlOn of the airplane flight (19): j and suddenly somebody is giving me a destination
z and we were sitting with our feet- k 1 look in the baek
just sitting there, 1 Thel'e's an unsuvory-looking pussenger in the
waiting back of the eab
for this thing to
start who had apparently gotten into the eab
people in while it was parked
the back saying prayers, 'n' and deeided he's gonna \vait for the driver.
everything. The phrase un unsuvory-10oking passenger in the back of Ihe cab
rnight be paraphrased as several narrative clauses: 1 looked into the
. IAt~othl er typ~ ~f correlative is the dou ble appositive whieh Ís back of the eab/I saw this eharacler/I didn't care for the way he
realveyrare'ülsusedt h' h , . looked. The left-hand participle then does a great cleal of work in
1 d J • .' o elg ten or deepen the effeet of a partie-
u ar escnptlOn. From a preadoleseent narrative: eharacterizing the antagonist in this narrative-rnore eoncisely per-
haps, than the elaborate descriptions given by John 1. in 3. It is not
 The TransforrnJlion uf [xperience in N.:malive Synldx 3lJl
390 THE USES OF BEV

accidental that sorne of Ihe most complex syntax is used in describ- al! speakers. The diagram below shows one such embed~in~ on
rcalize followed by one on found out and two deeper exphcatlOns
ing the principal antagonist, who is the chief justification for Ihe
claim Ihat Ihe narralive is reportable. Note that one reason for this that are bolh compound and complexo
complex form is thal it is coupled with three other proposítíons about .111<) when \11('n Wl' found out NI'.
Lhe antagonist so that il is quite helpful to get this descriptive mate- we ree1Iiz('d~NP S
S
rial out of the way in attribulive, left-hand position.
The emphasis on left-hand vs. right-hand is motivaled by the Cacl
thal Ihe former is far more complex for speaker and listener alike.
Absolute right-hand embedding is a simple matter for most children,
as we see in "The House that Jack built." Il is one thing to add a
right-hand participlc lo qualify an action, as in this example from
A theH we were really
out of d,1J1f;er
th,11 we had rl'dlly
l)pen &0 teme

an adult narrative:
34 But sorne reason every day after school
s
/
S ---- \--- S

Ihis kilI \Vas come
and slap me side o 'my head,
impressin' this girl.
It is another to build up participles as atlríbutives befare a noun,
keeping the syntactic structure open while the equivalent of an entire
sentence íntervenes between other modifiers and the head:
35 She was a big, burly-looking, dark Iype sort of gir!, a real,
geechy-Iookin' girl
This complex construction wíth two left-hand participles and multi-
pIe attributives is used to enrich and deepen Ihe characterization
of the chief antagonisl in a figh t story.
4.4 Explicatives
Sorne of the evaluation and explication of a narrative is necessarily
done in separate clauses, appended to the main narrative clause or
to an explicit evaluative clause. These may be qualifications con-
nected with such conjunctions as while, though; or causal, intro-
duced by sin ce or beco use. We further distinguish three types of
altachment to the main clause: simple, complex, and compound. By
simple, we mean that there is only one c¡ause; by complex, that a
clause is embedded in a clause which is in turn embedded in the
main clause: and by compound, that two dauses are embedded at
the same point in the matrix dause. "'Ve do not count here embedding
on verbs of saying and knowing, since the use of absolute right-hand
einbedding with verbs of this type is universal and automatic among
L"\. ""dL"\.
Ihat our lee! tha! we were
were up agdinst holding onto
!he panel everything
Note that these two last that dauses are embedded on the compara-
tive mode so. Al first glance, il would seem that such embedded finite
clauses differ onlv technically from the nominaljzations anel partici-
pIes classjfied as ~orrelativcs. In the correlatives, we have ad~ition~l
transformations which dele te the tense markers and combme thls
material jnto single dauses, whilc in the explicatives, complete
clauses are added. This is usually treated as a trivial difference: for
example, the three complementizers for-to, possessive + -ing, ~nd
that are often considered as a set-three equivalent ways of attachmg
embedded sentences to the matrix sentence. But for our purpose s
there is a crucial difference in the deletion of the tense marker after
for-to and ingY; No separate time distinction (:an be made w.ith
infinitives and gerunds; they necessarily are consldered coextenslve
with the majn verb as far as temporal sequence is conccrned. That
is not the case with the finite clauses which have that complc-
mentizers. Here we can explain an event by refcrring lo somelhing
15. FoI' other reasons to discI'iminate these complcmcntizers. seo Kiparsky and
Kiparsky 1970 and chaptcr 4. The dimcn,;!)n which dislinguished those !hree comple-
monlizers is esscnlially three dcgrees of \FACT].
392 THE USES OF BEV The Transformation of Experience in Narratíve Syntax 3':)3

that happened lóng before or long after. This is the case with 19,
where the tenses of the explicative clauses are overtly realized and
refer to points much earlier in the narrative. Thus explicatives do
not necessarily serve the evaluative function of bringing several
uc!ions together. The action of the narrative is suspended, but the
attention of the listener is not maintained at that point in time-it
may be transferred backward or forward, or ¡nto a realm oí abstract
speculation wholly unrelated lo the narrative. We may represent
explicatives in the narrative scheme as
Expl icatives:
The explication of the various complications inherent in the narra-
tive situation may serve an evaluative i'unction-e.g., to explain why
a person was frightened or how bíg someone was. But explication
may itself be required only to describe actions and events that are
not entirely familiar to the listener. We wouId then expect thut the
distribution of explications would be very different from that of the
other sourees oi' syntactie complexity, and in the next section it will
appear that that is the case.
In thís discussion of the sources of syntactic complexity in narra-
tive, we have set out a classification oi' the various ways in which
the minimal syntactic pattern is developed. There are many other
technical de vices used in narrative which might have be en discussed
here: deletions . whieh inelude claims to ignorance; the use of the
passive, and eJlipsis; reorderings, which include monologues, flash-
backs, and displacement of orientation. There are also dysfunctional
aspects of narrations: eonfusion of persons, anaphora and temporal
relations. This discussion has been limited to those evaluative de-
vices which involve the internal structure and syntactic complexity
01' narrative unÍts.
Sorne oi' the syntactic features diseussed here occur in clauses
whieh have a purely referential function: they elarify i'or the listener
the simple factual circumstances surrounding the narrative. But most
occurrences oi' these features are closely linked to the evaluation
of the narrative: they intensify certain narrative events that are most
releva nI to the main point; they compare the events that did occur
section, we will present certain quantitative data which will ma~e
this association more evident and show the growth of syntactlc
complexity with age.
5. Development of Evaluative Syntax with Age
It is often said that a child coming to school at the age of five has
already learned most of the grammar of his language. This proposi-
tion may be a healthy corrective to those who argue that they are
leaching the child lo speak the Englísh language in the first gra~e,
bul it is easy to overstate. In the course of our stud~ of narratI.ve
structure and syntactic complexity, we made a compaflson of stones
told by black preadolescents (age 10-12), adolescents (age13-16), and
adults fram the Harlem sample in ordet to see what development
actually takes place in the use of the evaluative devices ?utlined
aboye. It is clear that every child is in possession of the baslc narra-
tive syntax: it is aIso true that children know how to use gestures,
quantifiers, repetition, negatives, futures, moduls, and beCCJuse
clauses. The question is whether they know how and when to use
these devices for specific purposes in the course of telling u story.
Ten fight narratives were chosen for eaeh group: the basie patlern
emerges with great clarity i'rom this ~mall set.. Table 9.2 shows the
use of the four major types of evaluahonal devlees i'or the three age
groups. The first column shows the raw totals; the second column
the totals corrected for the average length of the narrative measured
as the number of independent clauses. This average length is longest
for the adults (Ad)-27.4 clauses-slightly less for adolescents (TA) ,
but much shorter for preadolescents (PA).
TABLE 92
TOTAL USE OF EVALUATIVE CATEGORIES IN NARRATIVE BY AGE
PA TA Ad
T01 ToriL Tot TolíL
Tot Tot/L
....
--~

1.23 51 2.05 S8 320

Inten,ifiers 12
fo those which might have but did not occur; they correlate the linear Comparators 12 1.23 TI 2.85 113 4.10
dimension oi' the narration by superimposing one event upon an- .12 12 48 23 .84
Correlatíves
.12 12 48 20 .73
other; and they explicate the point of the narrative in so many words. Explicatives
9.6 24.8 27.4
The examples we have cited aboye ilIustrate, bul do not prove, this l:
association between syntactic complexity and evaluation. In the next L = Average number ot ¡ndependen! clauses.
 394
THE USES OF BEV The Transformatíon of Experíence ín Narratíve Syntax

The figures for al! four evaluative categories show a regular and devices as the number of narrators who used each device at
marked increase from preadolescents to teenagers and another large least once. The numbers range fram 1 to 10: it appears lhat the only
increase from adolesccnls lo adulls. The inlensifiers show the shal- 100 percent categories are the use of negatives and quanlifiers by
lowest slope, roughly 1 to 2 to 3; the comparators are somewhat adults.
steeper in lheir rate of grawth; and the correlatives and explicatives As far as intensifiers are concerned, we see that the preadolcscents
show the sharpest rate of all, about 1 to 4 to 8. Looking at this table, are most apt to use quantifiers; the adolescents show a much richer
we can assert that lhe preadolescents still ha ve a great deal of use of expressive phonology and marked lexical ilems. Among the
language learning ahead of them. The ability to use negatives, fu- comparators, the most striking correlation with age is in the com-
lures, and modals in ordinary conversation is not equivalent to the parative itself. The correlatives as a whole are practically outside
abilily lo use lhem in narrative. of the range of the preadolescents sampled here: the only ilem used
One can ask whet·her lhis is a synlactic ability, a question of verbal with any degree of frequency by any group is the right-hand partici-
skill on a broader sense, or a growth of cognitive ability. In any case pie used by adults. Explicatives show the same dislribution by age;
there is a major aspect of development in narrative itseU which takes the most frequent item is the simple causative clause.
place long after the basic syntax of the language is learned, and it We compared these narratives of black speakers fram Harlem with
is quite possible that some of the more complex comparators and our white working-class control group, Inwood. Six fight narratives
correlatives are ou tside of the linguistic capacities of the pre- told by the Inwood adolescents show the following use of evaluators:
adolescents.
Table 9.3 shows the use of the various subtypes of evaluational
Total Tot/L
Intensifiers 29 1.26
TAI3LE 9.3.
NUMBER OF NARRATORS USING
Comparators 23 1.00
EVALUATIVE DEVICES AT LEAST ONCE Correlatives 4 .16
Explications O .00
/ntensifiers PA TA Ad Comparators PA TA Ad L = 23.3
Gestures O 1 1 Imperatives 3 6
Phonology O 5 3 Questions 4 4
Quantifier, 4 6 10 Negatives
The values for this small group of white teenagers are comparable
4 7 10
Lexical items O 5 7 Futures o 1 2
to those of the black preadolescents, rather than to the black adoles-
Foregrounding 2 Modals cents, though the length of the narratives is typical of this age. The
2 4 7
Repetitions O 5 3
Ritual
Quasimodals 2 6 7 profile for the four types of evaluators Is approximately the same
3 1 5 Or-clauses O 3 2 as for the Harlem preadolescents. It is perhaps too much to assert
WH-exclamations 3 Comparatives 6 6 from this small study that lhe black speakers are more advanced
Total 9" 27 32 Total 11 34 44 in narrative skills than the Inwood group, but they are certainly not
Corre/a Uves Exp/icatives behind or backward in this respect. On the contrary, lhere is evi-
Be. .. Ing O
dence here to support the proposition we advanced earlier that the
3 O Simple: qua l. O 3 3 highest concentration of verbal skills is to be found in the black
Double . .. -ing O O Simple: causo 3 5
Double appositive 1 2 English vernacular culture.
Complex: qual O O 2
Double attrib\e O 2 The late development in the use of evaluative syntax appears to
Complex: causo O 1
Part iciple: rt. O 5
leit
Compound: qual. O O O be general to all subcultures, though we have not yet investigated
O Cornpound: cau,. O 2 systematically age levels in white working-class and middle-class
Nominalizations O 2 Total 1 8 13 graups. It is surprising that this use of complex syntax in narrative
Total I 9 13 should fall so far behind competence in ordinary conversation. The
396 THE USES OF BEV
BIBLlOGRAPHY
contrast appears most sharply with comparators; there is no question
that preadolescents are thoroughly skilled in the use of other devices
such as modals, questíons, or futures, But they do not call upon these
elements as freely as adults in presenting their own experience, The
skilled adlllt complicates hÍs representatíon of experience, moving
báck and forth from real to imaginary events. Children complain,
question, deny, and worry, but adults áre more aware of the sig-
nificance of this activity and more likely to talk about it. !1"2 Plaving the dozens. Journo¡ of Americon Folklore
Ab ra h alns, R oge r. 1 , \ J . •

In reporting their own experience, adults have developed the ability
to evaluate their own behavior with more complex linguistic devices.
In middle-class speakers, this process often gets out of hand, and
many narrators cán lose the point of their story entirely in an excess
of external evaluation and syntactic elaboraBon. But when these
ele vices are concentrated anel embedded deeply in the dramatic
action, they can succeed in making the point. Many of the narratives
cited here rise to a very high level of competence; when they are
quoted in the exact words of the speaker, they will command the
total attention of an audience in a remarkable way, creating a deep
and attentive silence that is never found in academic or polítical
75:209-18.
_ _- o 1964. Deep down in the jungle: Negro n(Jfrativ~ fo] klore Jro.m thc
streets of Philodelphio, Chicago: Aldine publtshmg Campan}'.
_ _ _ . 1970. Rapping ami capping: black talk as art. In !3lndi Amcríco.
cd. John F. Szwed. New York: Basic Books.
I F k 1959 Speech v'lriation among Negro!:!> in ¡¡ smnll sonlhcrn
i\ns 1cn, ran "t u'npublishe~1 New York University dissertation.
comman! y. '
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